Losing an Illusion
by Cartly
Summary: SPOILERS: The Beginning, Fight the Future. "Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." --Ludwig Borne; Following their trek to Antarctica, Scully discovers she's not out of the woods yet.


TITLE: Losing an Illusion  
AUTHOR: Cartly  
E-MAIL: cartly42 (a) yahoo. com  
DATE: August 20th, 2004  
SPOILERS: The Beginning, Fight the Future  
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: SA; M/S UST; Scully angst  
SUMMARY: "Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." –Ludwig Borne  
DISCLAIMER: They belong to FOX, 1013, Chris Carter, and all those other big-shots.  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Mulder and Scully's whole relationship throughout The End and The Beginning bothered me, thus this bit of angst was born. It was definitely a 'what-if' scenario. Archival is find, just drop me a note so I can visit.

"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." –Ludwig Borne

She knew he felt betrayed by her.

Mulder believed that the proof needed for their reinstatement to the X-Files was in her blood: blood that was cured by a vaccine they still knew nothing about. It seemed a folly to stake such a high bet on just one card, but he had been so sure it was a trump ace, and she had encouraged the thought blindly, bringing with her an impotent deuce.

The evening before the OPR committee sped along, with Scully stumbling after. She needed the use of a lab, but wouldn't risk any assistants for fear of tampering; this was too important for even misguided scorn towards the paranoia she was displaying. Analyzing her blood-work was a tedious process, with dreary waiting involved. It was made even longer by her solo act, giving her plenty of silent time to try and remember everything she could about their recent jaunt to Antarctica.

And she could remember nothing.

Drawing her blood, separating the necessary components, comparing the results. Even after all this, it was well past two a.m. before she drifted off to sleep, her face pressed against her notebook. The tests rested idly in front of her, still incomplete and still requiring compilation.

Waking up was the worst. Her skin was stuck against the paper, and her eyes felt gritty. Needing to finish, but lacking the time she'd like, Scully forced the sleepy grains from her eyes, ignoring the urge to touch her raw, frostbitten skin. She rushed to get everything finished in time for the hearing, taking a few minutes to work through her results.

She read them through once.

She read them through again.

She checked her watch and dialed Mulder's cell phone over and over, only to get the same recorded cellular company response. These weren't the findings he wanted, and these were not the findings that would hand them back the X-Files. Worst of all: these were not the finding's she'd so foolishly promised him.

She was late for the meeting, but even more tragic was the fact that she couldn't get a hold of her partner.

What happened to their ace?

She swallowed over her scratchy throat, breathing through uncomfortably dry nasal passages. He was up there already, she knew. The first time he was ever punctual for a meeting would be the singular time she wished he'd never arrive.

She hoped the data wouldn't come up. She hoped that Mulder would recount the experience with his usual flair for arrogantly forgoing evidence. This time, though, she realized her hopes would be in vain.

'We'll have what we've always needed for validation,' she'd guaranteed, 'undeniable scientific proof of everything that's happened: of the virus that infected me and the vaccine that was its cure. It will be everything we need to procure our continued involvement in the reinstatement of the X-Files.'

He'd asked for her support, and she'd thought she could give it. But without the desired results, without the proof, she couldn't back Mulder up on his version of events; not without compromising her integrity.

Seeing his face as he realized she wasn't standing behind him was physically painful to her. There was pain and betrayal, but what hurt worse was, deep in his eyes, she saw resignation, as though he had expected this all along. As though he knew she could never be what he needed: a partner who accepted and strengthened his beliefs, who was there when needed and never compromised his quest: the only thing that mattered.

She didn't know what to say to him. His pretty words about needing her and owing her rang falsely in her head. She knew he must blame her for what will surely be their denial at reinstatement. Anger and sorrow warred within her, and she wondered if she really did hold him back.

His anger fairly crackled in the air as the OPR meeting adjourned, and witnessing his contempt added fuel to her own resentment. She met up with her partner outside the meeting room, listening to him throw a biting, sarcastic remark her way. She deflected it.

He wanted to know, once more, what she observed in Antarctica.

"Mulder, let me remind you once again," she told him. "What I saw was very little." After being stung, she can blearily recall awakening to Mulder's face and encouraging voice.

she is so tired and so nauseous and all she wants to do is curl up and go to sleep but no scully we have to keep moving we have to go c'mon scully you can do it just a little farther keep going

She swallowed convulsively.

He thought she was only making excuses. "You were there and you were infected with that virus."

She could take the blame for holding the X-Files back and for making promises she couldn't keep, but she refused to take the blame for what the tests had revealed. She told him that the virus was not extra-terrestrial. Rather, it was garnered from their own world. For all the times she refused to accept his theories, he was refusing to accept her findings.

"I saw what that virus did," he reminded her. "I saw it generate a new being: an alien being inside a human body."

She carefully explained the virus's methods, seeing his emotions close off to her in cold refusal. "What you can't question is the science." She'd performed the tests herself, and there it was: hard, undeniable proof that the virus that infected her was, in fact, completely terrestrial.

She saw anger—and what she prayed was not disgust—in his eyes before he turned away and stormed out of the room. She felt a sigh escape her lips, and her breath scraped painfully across her throat. Brilliant investigator that he was, she doubted he noticed her make-up was barely visible and she wore the same clothes he'd seen her in the day before. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and she hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.

"Agent Scully?"

She was facing the door where Mulder had left, absorbed in her thoughts, so she hadn't noticed her superiors exiting the conference room. She turned her head around to face them, but she turned too quickly. She was seized by a blast of vertigo; her palm pressed against her forehead, and she stumbled several steps, trying to reestablish her equilibrium. Her vision blackened around the edges, spots dancing before her eyes, until her whole world darkened. Her sight returned after several seconds, and she realized she was lying on her back, her head supported by someone's suit jacket.

"Sorry," she murmured, embarrassed for creating a scene. Numerous faces surrounded her, most looking curious rather than concerned.

"Give her some room," A.D. Skinner said, and he pushed his way into the circle standing hovering above her. She saw him freeze and stare at her face in mute shock.

In fact, she noted, everyone was gazing at her with wide eyes.

"It's just my low blood sugar. If I eat something, I'll be fine," she assured them. Her voice sounded raspy. Their looks were unsettling to her, and she licked her lips nervously. A sharp, metallic tang greeted her. Slowly, she reached a trembling hand towards her face, swiping at the skin above her upper lip.

She pulled away fingers slick with blood.

Not again was the thought that kept reemerging in her brain. Not again. Not again.

She was surprised to see Assistant Director Maslin, the woman heading the committee, offer her a handful of tissues. She accepted them wordlessly, but refused to be supported as she rose, standing as tall as she could and holding her head high.

She wanted to ask for their discretion of what they just observed, but the gathering crowd made that impossible. Curious heads ducked inside the doorway, and the people gathering outside murmured to one another. She pressed a tissue to her nose, walking briskly towards the nearest women's restroom.

The cold water from the faucet felt good against her flushed skin and the warm, sticky blood. She tried to tell herself not to panic, to think things through rationally. Her dizziness was from fatigue and hunger, while the nosebleed was a side effect of her time spent in sub-zero temperatures.

None of this logical thinking prevented her from pulling out her cell phone and arranging a meeting with her oncologist for the following week, the earliest open appointment.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Dana, I'm sorry you had to sit through a week of worry. Your test results are clean. There's no sign of the tumor," her doctor told her with a smile, obviously happy to be handing out good news.

"Thanks," Scully muttered absently, not pointing out that her week had been full of far more than a simple nosebleed, her mind occupied with other goings-on.

She had been correct in interpreting her nosebleed as a result of the extreme cold in Antarctica. The temperature had frozen the tiny, delicate capillaries in her nasal passages, weakening the walls until they had broken outside an OPR meeting room. Her collapse had been caused by her low blood sugar, as she had informed the A.D.'s surrounding her a week ago.

As she predicted, the X-Files had been denied to her and Mulder, instead being placed into the loving hands of Agents Spender and Fowley.

Delegated to scut work wouldn't be such a punishment if her partnership with Mulder was still in working order. It seemed she couldn't say anything without setting him off, and she felt herself growing disenchanted with their work together. Where normally she would find herself concerned at his absence, she adopted a sort of counterfeit apathy. She pretended she didn't care, so as to match his sincere indifference.

She left the hospital, feeling no better about her situation. Climbing into her car, she went through the motions of driving without giving them any thought. Her mind was much too preoccupied.

She didn't pretend to ignore what he'd done for her. Marching off to Antarctica armed with a vaccine and a set of coordinates, hell-bent on rescuing her was a noble endeavor, without a doubt. But she'd seen him show that same intensity to a little boy in Iowa, a harried, overworked waitress, a rough-and-tough blind woman.

He still cared for her, no doubt; but any loving devotion he may have once felt was surely gone by now. She had betrayed him, left him stranded, alone, in front of their superiors.

Multiple agents and secretaries had witnessed her collapse after the OPR committee meeting. Out of the basement, Mulder surely would have found out--through the grapevine--of her nosebleed.

He never asked her about it.

She never told him.

More author's notes: I write stuff that I would never read. This was far too angst-y for my tastes. But I couldn't let go of the 'what if Scully had a relapse?' Of course, that switched to 'what if Scully _thinks_ she has a relapse?' I honestly don't know what Mulder would have done when he found out, so I kept this as a pure Scullyfic.

Comments and criticism will be cherished forever. My e-mail's in the heading.


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